4/19 News Roundup & Open Thread

Good morning friends. All the Bernie news is going in the post below, everything else I stumble across will go here! I am likely to be super busy trying to pump out as much work as possible so I can take the day off to see Bernie tomorrow, so not quite sure how long I will be around…. but know that you all will fill in any gaps! Much appreciated, have a great day!

With Steve Bannon on way out, official Washington is jumping for joy that Gary Cohn—the former president of Goldman Sachs who’s now running Trump’s National Economic Council, along with Dina Powell, another influential Goldman Sachs alumnus—seems to be taking over Trump’s brain.

As CNBC puts it, Cohn will push “more moderate, business-friendly economic policies.” The Washington Post says Cohn is advocating “a centrist vision.” The Post goes on to describe “The growing strength of Cohn and like-minded moderates” as revealed in Trump’s endorsement of government subsidies for exports, and of corporate tax cuts. Says the Post: “The president’s new positions move him much closer to the views of … mainstream Republicans and Democrats.”

In reality, Cohn, Powell, and other Wall Streeters in the Trump White House are pushing Trump closer to the views of Wall Street and big business – views that are reflected in the views of “mainstream” Republicans and Democrats only to the extent the “mainstream” is dependent on the Street and big corporations for campaign money.

These views aren’t “centrist,” and they’re not sustainable. More tax breaks for the rich and more subsidies for big corporations aren’t much better for America than xenophobia.

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There’s a better alternative. It’s to make it easy for people who lose their jobs to get new ones that pay at least as well, through wage insurance; expand the Earned Income Tax Credit and raise the minimum wage so every job pays a living wage; invest in great teachers and great schools, along with a system of lifelong learning, and high-quality early childhood education; and provide Medicare for all.

And pay for all of this with a 2 percent tax on wealth over $1 million and a carbon tax. While we’re at it, get big money out of politics.

Here’s a “centrist” agenda that big business, Wall Street, and the rest of America should agree on because it (or something very much like it) is the only way to move forward without inviting even more inequalities of income, wealth, and political power – and ever more vicious backlashes against such inequities.

Before they could enter the San Francisco Scottish Rite Masonic Center, the roughly 1,200 people who showed up for California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s town hall meeting yesterday morning had their bags searched and their bodies scanned for metal objects. As they filed into the thickly carpeted auditorium, attendees passed several tables covered with literature laid out by Indivisible, the liberal grassroots group that had helped organize this rare public meeting with the senator. The leaflets included a list of recommended questions for a senator who doesn’t often field questions from constituents, even here in her liberal hometown.

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Questioners were selected at random by raffle. Once called, participants made their way to the front of the auditorium where they stood just a few yards from Feinstein. The first was a woman who was worried that “trigger happy” President Donald Trump might deploy her son to Syria, and wanted to know what Feinstein would do to ensure peace in the Middle East. “The world is not an easy place, and it is not a stable place,” Feinstein replied. She continued, somewhat confusingly, with an explanation of how North Korea presents an “existential” threat and an “acute danger” to the United States. After speaking for some time about the “ruthless” Kim Jong-un’s attempts to build a nuclear tipped missile capable of striking “anywhere in the United States,” Feinstein pivoted back to the Middle East. When she mentioned, without reservation, Trump’s recent missile attack on a Syrian air base, the crowd erupted with a cacophony of boos.

A few minutes later, a man asked the senator if she would support a single-payer health care system. “If single payer health care is going to mean a complete government takeover over of the health care system, I am not for it,” Feinstein replied, again to boos.

If we used all the “extra help” she speaks of, it would go a long ways towards funding single payer. And health care costs have to go down.

Just found out that Part F is also increasing substantially b/c of the “cost of health care” for the elderly. I am grateful that it is less than it would be under a completely private plan. But beware, those of you getting close to your Medicare years, don’t think that it will be a breeze.

Good for Indivisible. I’m going to look into this further. Justice Dems mostly need money and/or Bernie candidates, but Indivisible is taking it to the establishment Dems, which may be one of the most important things we can be doing now. Keep exposing how similar it all is, as Reich said. Keep it up front that we are NOT going back to establishment Dems, Trump or no Trump.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator has found a slogan for his embattled agency’s new direction. Last week, Scott Pruitt announced a #Back2Basics campaign that proposes returning the EPA to its supposed roots: protecting the environment, spurring job growth, and not burdening industry with rules and regulations. Pruitt might see firsthand the problems with this vision on Wednesday when he visits East Chicago, Indiana, a mostly black and Latino city of 29,000 that is home to a Superfund site and a host of other environmental problems.

Local officials, including Indiana’s Republican governor, Eric Holcomb, urged Pruitt to visit the site and address the issues surrounding the cleanup process, which has been lagging for several years. The site is known as USS Lead, referring to the smelting facility that operated there between 1906 and 1985, turning refined copper and lead into batteries and other products and, in the process, contaminating the soil in the area with lead and arsenic. The site was added to the National Priorities list in 2009, which means it’s one of the most polluted sites in the country.

Democrat Jon Ossoff came up just short of an outright victory in Tuesday’s special election for the Georgia congressional seat vacated by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. Instead after finishing a few points shy of the 50-percent threshold in a 20-candidate field, he’ll face off against Republican Karen Handel on June 20th.

The race was the third special congressional election since November, but the first in a district considered even remotely competitive. Although the sixth was considered safely Republican for decades and Price never faced serious opposition, Hillary Clinton nearly won the district in November. Ossoff raised more than $10 million—more in a single quarter than an House candidate in history—and turned the race into a magnet for anti-Trump activism, even as the candidates in the race stayed largely quiet on the subject.

congressional district in suburban Atlanta, after falling just short of the majority threshold needed to win outright in a special election on Tuesday.

With 88% of precincts reporting, the 30-year-old had 48.3% of the vote. He willl face Republican opponent Karen Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state, on 20 June, after Handel finished second in a chaotic 18-candidate field.

In a speech just before midnight, Ossoff painted his performance as a victory, saying: “We may not know the outcome for sometime but let me tell you this, there is no doubt that this is already a victory for the ages.”

In a midnight tweet, Donald Trump took a victory lap for Ossoff’s expected failure to win a majority of the vote. “Despite major outside money, FAKE media support and eleven Republican candidates, BIG “R” win with runoff in Georgia. Glad to be of help!” The campaign had attracted late attention from Trump, who tweeted six times about it in the 48 hours before polls closed, an unprecedented level of activity in a down-ballot race.

There is one foreign policy goal that matters above all the others, and that is to keep the United States out of a new war, whether in Syria, North Korea, or elsewhere. In recent days, President Trump has struck Syria with Tomahawk missiles, bombed Afghanistan with the most powerful nonnuclear bomb in the US arsenal, and has sent an armada toward nuclear-armed North Korea. We could easily find ourselves in a rapidly escalating war, one that could pit the United States directly against nuclear-armed countries of China, North Korea, and Russia.

Such a war, if it turned nuclear and global, could end the world. Even a nonnuclear war could end democracy in the United States, or the United States as a unified nation. Who thought the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan would end the Soviet Union itself? Which of the belligerents at the start of World War I foresaw the catastrophic end of four giant empires — Hohenzollern (Prussia), Romanov (Russia), Ottoman, and Hapsburg — as a result of the war?

These are terrifying prospects, and they may seem unreal, even preposterous. Yet Trump is impetuous, unstable, and inexperienced. His foreign policies swing wildly from day to day. He makes threats, such as attacking North Korea, that could have horrific, indeed catastrophic, consequences.

Think back to JFK’s Executive Committee as it grappled with the Cuban missile crisis. Many of Kennedy’s military advisers would have led us to thermonuclear war. The Kennedy brothers, John and Robert, with their cool heads and profound sense of responsibility, saved us despite their advisers, not because of them. We should all shudder when contemplating an ExComm meeting in our time.

Sad to say, America’s history of war is not encouraging. America’s shining nobility in World War II and its positive, though flawed, role in the Korean War, should not obscure America’s many disastrous wars of choice, when America went to war for deeply flawed reasons and ended up causing havoc at home and abroad.

Make no mistake: after 15 years of losing wars, spreading terror movements, and multiplying failed states across the Greater Middle East, America will fight the next versions of our ongoing wars. Not that we ever really stopped. Sure, Washington traded in George W. Bush’s expansive, almost messianic attitude toward his Global War on Terror for Barack Obama’s more precise, deliberate, even cautious approach to an unnamed version of the same war for hegemony in the Greater Middle East. Sure, in the process kitted-up 19 year-olds from Iowa became less ubiquitous features on Baghdad’s and Kabul’s busy boulevards, even if that distinction was lost on the real-life targets of America’s wars — and the bystanders (call them “collateral damage”) scurrying across digital drone display screens.

It’s hardly a brilliant observation to point out that, more than 15 years later, the entire region is a remarkable mess. So much worse off than Washington found it, even if all of that mess can’t simply be blamed on the United States — at least not directly. It’s too late now, as the Trumpadministration is discovering, to retreat behind two oceans and cover our collective eyes. And yet, acts that might still do some modest amount of good (resettling refugees, sending aid, brokering truces, anything within reason to limit suffering) don’t seem to be on any American agenda.

Raising concern about the violations of privacy occurring in the name of U.S. border security, a coalition of consumer rights groups on Tuesday launched a new campaign opposing the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) so-called “extreme vetting” practice that requires travelers to reveal their social media passwords.

“Even if you support ‘extreme vetting,’ password for entry is an extremely bad idea that sacrifices privacy and digital security for political posturing and ‘security theater,'” said Nathan White, senior legislative director at Access Now, one of the 29 organizations launching the ‘Fly Don’t Spy’ campaign.

“We’re launching this campaign today to make it clear to Secretary John Kelly that we will not tolerate discrimination or a reckless disregard for privacy and cybersecurity,” White added, inviting others to include their name on a petition directed at the DHS chief.

The campaign was launched the same day that Kelly gave a speech in Washington, D.C. defending his tactics. Since his confirmation, Kelly has overseen implementation of President Donald Trump’s controversial immigration policies, which include the currently-defunct ban on individuals from majority-Muslim nations, the mass-deportation of immigrants, and stepped-up border security which many say unfairly targets Muslim travelers.

It’s hard to avoid hyperbole when you talk about global warming. It is, after all, the biggest thing humans have ever done, and by a very large margin. In the past year, we’ve decimated the Great Barrier Reef, which is the largest living structure on Earth. In the drought-stricken territories around the Sahara, we’ve helped kick off what The New York Times called “one of the biggest humanitarian disasters since World War II.” We’ve melted ice at the poles at a record pace, because our emissions trap extra heat from the sun that’s equivalent to 400,000 Hiroshima-size explosions a day. Which is why, just maybe, you should come to Washington, DC, on April 29 for a series of big climate protests that will mark the 100th day of Trumptime. Maybe the biggest thing ever is worth a day.

﻿ Here’s the truth about these protests: People started planning them more than a year ago, when the pollsters confidently predicted that Hillary Clinton would occupy the White House. Trump still seemed an outlier. Men like Scott Pruitt and Rex Tillerson were still safely back in Oklahoma and Texas instead of heading the Environmental Protection Agency and the State Department. The Interior Department hadn’t yet changed its home-page picture from a photo of a family camping to an 80-foot seam of coal. No one was talking about shutting down our climate satellites.

And yet we still knew we would need to march. Because global warming isn’t really Trump’s fault. Yes, he’s a uniquely disgusting person, and yes, he was elected at the worst possible moment, just as humanity was starting to build a tiny bit of momentum in the fight against climate change. And yes, he’s mounting an all-out defense of the archaic fossil-fuel industry. There’s no question he’s the enemy right now.

But the carbon that melted the ice caps? That’s from the Eisenhower years and the Carter administration and the Reagan era—not to mention the Deng Xiaoping regime and the Brezhnev Politburo. The Great Barrier Reef would have died in a Bernie Sanders administration. Barack Obama was president during the three hottest years in history, and during his administration, the United States passed Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the largest producer of hydrocarbons on earth. So these marches and protests—though fully a part of the emerging resistance—aren’t just about Trump.

﻿ They’re also about the machine that has been driving the planet in a dangerous direction for decades, a machine that spans parties, ideologies, and continents. And they’re about the hope for what could come next, a vision that’s emerging piece by piece around the world

Donald Trump’s aides have abruptly postponed a meeting to determine whether the US should remain in the Paris climate agreement, with an unlikely coalition of fossil fuel firms, environmental groups and some Republicans calling on the president to stick with the deal.

Trump’s top advisers were set to meet on Tuesday to provide the president with a recommendation ahead of a G7 meeting in May. However, a White House official said the meeting had been postponed due to conflicting schedules. It is unclear when it will now take place.

Trump has already signed executive orders to start the demolition of the clean power plan, throw open federal land to coal mining, and halt new vehicle emissions standards but has so far not acted on his campaign pledge to “cancel” the Paris compromise.

Americans in many cases have been slow to acknowledge the real threats posed by global warming. But two new studies out Monday found that people living throughout the United States could soon see their communities forever altered by higher seas and raging forest fires.

While the United States has lagged in taking dramatic action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or transform its power grid to accommodate renewable energy sources, other nations have taken the lead. Further, studies have historically shown (pdf) that Americans are generally reluctant to perceive climate change as anything more than a moderate risk, seeing it as something that impacts people in more vulnerable, developing nations.

The idea of a person becoming a climate change refugee seems similarly foreign.

However, Mathew Hauer, a demographer at the University of Georgia, estimates that by the end of the century as many as 13.1 million Americans could too find themselves displaced due to rising sea levels. His research is published in the journal Nature Climate Change and suggests those migrants will be forced to move to inland cities, ultimately “reshaping” the population landscape.

The report notes that unmitigated sea-level rise (SLR)—primarily seen as “a coastal issue”—is “expected to reshape the U.S. population distribution, potentially stressing landlocked areas unprepared to accommodate this wave of coastal migrants.” For instance, if seas rise the expected 1.8 meters by 2100, Texas could see a surge of nearly 1.5 million additional residents. Specifically, inland cities including Austin and Houston, Texas; Orlando, Florida; and Atlanta, Georgia could each see more than 250,000 people migrating from the imperiled coasts.

Grim wants to stay on DKos’s good side. Doesn’t call out the lies. At least I haven’t heard it yet. Video isn’t over. He’s nothing like Young Turks, TYT, JDore, etc. So Kos is now saying he’s not with the Dems? hahahahaha! That’s why he’s still saying that women felt “safer” at the GOS during the primary, cuz he’s so neutral. Makes me too angry.

And this TYT reporter seemed deferential to both Ryan and kos here. weird.

Arkansas had big plans to execute seven men in 10 days beginning Monday night, when Don Davis and Bruce Ward were scheduled to be taken from their death row cells in the state’s Varner Unit and driven roughly three miles to the Cummins Unit, or “death house,” near the small town of Grady.

That didn’t happen, because of a slew of legal decisions on state and federal levels. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the stays of execution granted by lower courts, but delays from the Arkansas Supreme Court remained after the state chose not to appeal a stay given to Ward, and the U.S. Supreme Court decided to maintain the stay given to Davis in a last-minute ruling less than ten minutes before his death warrant expired at midnight Monday.

As of Tuesday morning, there are no legal proceedings blocking the remaining five executions from taking place.

Patrick Crain, who worked for the Arkansas Department of Corrections from 2003 to 2007 and was head of the Varner unit’s death row, told the Intercept that he’s shocked the state of Arkansas wants “to carry out the executions in this crazy way.”

He said he worked with good people at Varner, and hates to see this happening to them.

“What are they going to tell their kids? ‘Hi Johnny, I executed seven people’? Crain asked, his voice tinged with outrage. “That’s ridiculous. They’re going to carry it around inside for the rest of their lives. It’s going to affect them and their families.”

As Donald Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping dined on Dover sole and New York strip steak earlier this month, thousands of miles away in China a government office quietly approved trademarks that could benefit the US president’s family.

On the day the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump met the Chinese leader, China granted preliminary approval for three new trademarks for her namesake brand, covering jewellery, bags and spa service, according to official documents.

Her company, Ivanka Trump Marks LLC, has been granted four additional trademarks since her father’s inauguration and has 32 pending, according to the Associated Press, which first reported the new approvals.

Donald Trump’s White House has created a minefield of ethics concerns, according to critics, and the president and his top officials represent one of the wealthiest cabinets in history, with business empires spanning the globe. Ivanka Trump was appointed assistant to the president last month, after previously saying she would not join her father’s administration.

Slick Willie, the DLCraporate, Turd Way and all the other crap he heads need to be flushed down the toilet for good. What a jackass he is, so-called Rhodes Scholar “genius.” The issues Bernie represents are why we back him. T and R to the usual suspects!! LD, please bring back a full report from the Bernster’s Rally. Thanks!! 🙂

Brain scans have revealed the first evidence for what appears to be a heightened state of consciousness in people who took psychedelic drugs in the name of science.

Healthy volunteers who received LSD, ketamine or psilocybin, a compound found in magic mushrooms, were found to have more random brain activity than normal while under the influence, according to a study into the effects of the drugs.

The shift in brain activity accompanied a host of peculiar sensations that the participants said ranged from floating and finding inner peace, to distortions in time and a conviction that the self was disintegrating.

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Carhart-Harris was among researchers who published a small trial last year into the use of psilocybin to treat serious depression. The results were promising, but more studies are needed before the compound can be considered for treatment, and the scientists warned people off picking magic mushrooms to treat their condition.

“The evidence is becoming clear that there is a clinical efficacy with these drugs,” said Seth. “We might be able to measure the effects of LSD in an individual way to predict how someone might respond to it as treatment.”

The first sugar tax to be introduced on soft drinks in the United States to fight obesity has cut sales by nearly 10% and apparently increased the numbers of people buying water instead, a study has shown.

Berkeley, California, introduced a substantial tax on sugar-sweetened beverages on 1 March 2015. At the rate of 10% – or one penny per fluid ounce – it adds 12 cents to a 12 ounce can of soda priced at $1, or 68 cents to a two litre bottle costing just over $2 before the tax.

Experts hope that sugar taxes will hike the prices of unhealthy drinks and reduce the number of people who consume large quantities of them. Sugar-sweetened drinks are known to be a significant contributor to obesity, particularly in children and young people.

But taxes have only been introduced after battles with the industry. The latest tax to be introduced – in Philadelphia, in January, where unlike Berkeley incomes are low and obesity rates high – is still being challenged in the courts.

As has been reported, the Trump administration is proposing massive cuts to the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), budget. Included in those cuts is the complete elimination of the Sea Grant program.

As a former California Sea Grant fellow with the California Natural Resources Agency, I take personal offense to this assault. The fellowship program has been invaluable to me, giving me a vital role in the state’s efforts to address marine litter and waste management issues, teaching me to critically evaluate and craft policy solutions, as well as how to interpret and translate science for policy and communications.

Sea Grant’s state and federal fellowships provide recent graduates with an opportunity to participate in research and policy using a science-based approach. The program trains the next generation of decision makers and policy professionals to ensure balanced management of our marine resources.

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For 50 years, Sea Grant has been at the forefront of creating economic opportunities, enhancing food and water security, and reducing risks from natural hazards and extreme events facing coastal communities through research and outreach efforts. Sea Grant’s research has been critical to making smart decisions about how we manage, protect, and use the resources from our nation’s coastal, marine, and Great Lakes environments.

In fiscal year 2015-16 alone, Sea Grant used its $67.3 million federal appropriation to generate an estimated $575 million in economic impacts around the country; created or sustained nearly 21,000 jobs and almost 3,000 businesses; helped 534 coastal communities implement sustainable development practices or policies so they are more resilient to hazards like flooding and hurricanes; and helped more than 40,000 fishermen adopt sustainable harvesting techniques.

The five international judges for the Monsanto Tribunal presented their legal opinion Tuesday, which includes key conclusions on the conduct of Monsanto and the need for important changes to international laws governing multinational corporations.

The judges concluded that Monsanto has engaged in practices that have impinged on the basic human right to a healthy environment, the right to food and the right to health. Additionally, Monsanto’s conduct has a negative impact on the right of scientists to freely conduct indispensable research.

The judges also concluded that despite the development of regulations intended to protect the environment, a gap remains between commitments and the reality of environmental protection. International law should now precisely and clearly assert the protection of the environment and establish the crime of ecocide. The Tribunal concluded that if ecocide were formally recognized as a crime in international criminal law, the activities of Monsanto could possibly constitute a crime of ecocide.

In the third part of the advisory opinion, the Tribunal focused on the widening gap between international human rights law and corporate accountability.

It called for the need to assert the primacy of international human and environmental rights law. A set of legal rules is in place to protect investors’ rights in the frame of the World Trade Organization and in bilateral investment treaties and in clauses in free-trade agreements. These provisions tend to undermine the capacity of nations to maintain policies, laws and practices protecting human and environmental rights. United Nations bodies urgently need to take action. Otherwise, key questions of human and environmental rights violations will be resolved by private tribunals operating entirely outside the United Nations framework.

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin signed a bill into law Monday that will end a state tax credit several years early for electricity generated by wind power.

Under the new legislation, wind farms that start producing energy after July 1 will not be able to claim the state’s “zero emission tax credit” program. The credit was originally set to expire in January 2021.

Fallin acknowledged that the program, which pushed claims from $3.7 million in 2010 to $113 million in 2014, helped Oklahoma become the third-largest producer of wind power in the country. However, the Republican governor noted that the state’s estimated $868 million budget shortfall necessitated the phaseout of wind incentives.

“The zero emissions tax credit was key to the growth of wind energy in Oklahoma, and I’m grateful to the industry for their ambitious successes, as well as their willingness to work with the state to address our challenging budgetary circumstances,” Fallin said. “It is time to ensure that Oklahoma has a bright future, and continues its position as a prominent energy state.”

The measure appeared to have support from the wind industry itself. Jeffrey Clark, president of The Wind Coalition, told The Oklahoman that the incentives have been “incredibly beneficial, but we remain the first and only industry to offer to phase out its incentives.”

But Fallin and state lawmakers have been criticized for keeping generous tax breaks in place for the oil and gas industry while squeezing other public services such as school funding during the budget crisis.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is hiring private debt collectors to snatch up unpaid taxes, which consumer advocates warned Monday could come with a host of problems—from mistreatment to profit incentives to exploitation by scammers.

The four companies hired by the IRS are CBE, ConServe, Performant, and Pioneer Credit Recovery, NBC News reported. The move comes as people continue to demand President Donald Trump release his tax returns, which he has thus far refused to do.

NBC News writes:

These debt collectors won’t simply call people out of the blue. Taxpayers with overdue tax bills will always receive several collection notices from the IRS through the mail before their accounts are turned over to the private collectors. The collection agencies will then send a letter of their own, informing the taxpayer that their account has been transferred to them. These companies must clearly identify themselves as working for the IRS in all communications.

[…] The IRS says it will not assign accounts to private collection agencies involving certain types of taxpayers, including: minors, those in combat zones, victims of tax-related identity theft, accounts that are subject to installment agreements, or classified as an innocent spouse case.

Still, the opportunity for abuse is ripe, consumer advocates said—particularly because, as tax law professor Adam Chodorow pointed out last week at Slate, the companies will get to keep 25 percent of the bills they collect.

Though no one denies Senate Democrats are in for a rough 2018 midterm election, a host of their vulnerable incumbents just posted some eye-popping fundraising numbers — a sign the party won’t easily cede more ground to Republicans next year.

Of the 10 Senate Democrats up for reelection in states Donald Trump won last fall, six brought in at least $2 million in the first quarter of 2017. Most Democrats far outpaced fundraising compared with the two Senate Republicans being targeted by Democrats next year: Dean Heller of Nevada and Jeff Flake of Arizona, both of whom raised $1.4 million during the first three months of the year.

And on average, Senate Democrats in competitive races outraised GOP incumbents at the same point in the 2016 election cycle.

Democrats are heavy underdogs to win back the Senate because they have to defend 25 seats versus just nine that Republicans are trying to keep in their column. But the Democratic senators’ blockbuster first-quarter numbers — buoyed by liberal grass-roots opposition to Trump — are giving them an early shot of momentum heading into the midterms. Strategists also hope the numbers will scare off potential GOP challengers at a time when Republicans are struggling to recruit candidates.

A nonprofit controlled by allies of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is spending $500,000 on radio ads backing Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, an early cash injection bucking up one of the most vulnerable Democrats facing reelection in 2018.

Majority Forward is paying for the ads, which will air statewide over the next four weeks. Majority Forward is affiliated with Senate Majority PAC, the main super PAC that supports Senate Democrats. The ads are the first from either group aimed at the 2018 elections, when 10 Senate Democrats are up for reelection in states President Donald Trump carried last fall.

Trump won Missouri by more than 18 percentage points, racking up large margins in the state’s rural counties. The new ad from Majority Forward touts McCaskill for promoting and protecting rural hospitals, echoing recent messaging from McCaskill. The ads emphasize her father’s work in agriculture and the fact that she grew up in small towns.

Just weeks after pleading Sen. Bernie Sanders‘ supporters and progressives to refrain from challenging her in the primaries before her 2018 re-election, former Hillary Clinton campaign surrogate Sen. Claire McCaskill is back to attacking progressive policies. “Free college tuition is a great goal except it’s really expensive. It’s really expensive, and we are struggling over how we’re going to pay in terms of what we have right now for Medicare,” McCaskill said last week. “We can’t just start having the government pay for everything. When people talk about that and they point out countries where that happens, people are paying 70 percent of their income in taxes.”

McCaskill’s arguments resemble sound bytes from Clinton’s campaign in the Democratic primaries when she attempted to dismiss progressive policies as unrealistic and expensive but failed to address how Sanders and his economic advisers funding them without—as McCaskill claims—hiking taxes to 70 percent. McCaskill’s fear mongering is misleading especially given that the highest tax rate out of the 34 countries in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) is Denmark, which has just under a 50 percent tax rate.

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly offered a sharp rebuttal to critics of his department on Tuesday, challenging lawmakers who dislike its approach to immigration enforcement to change the law or “shut up.”

Employees at the Department of Homeland Security, he told an audience at George Washington University, “are often ridiculed and insulted by public officials and frequently convicted in the court of public opinion on unfounded allegations testified to by street lawyers and street spokespersons.”

“If lawmakers do not like the laws that we enforce, that we are charged to enforce, that we are sworn to enforce, then they should have the courage and the skill to change those laws,” Kelly said. “Otherwise, they should shut up and support the men and women on the front lines.”

Kelly’s remarks at the event, which included a question-and-answer period, laid out a bleak worldview similar to what President Donald Trump has articulated. The country is continuously “under attack” by drug smugglers, terrorists and other criminals who hate America and try to cross its borders, Kelly said, arguing that law enforcement officials do not always get the respect they deserve for protecting Americans.

In a recent interview with Democracy Now (screenshot above), Cohen cites Trump’s recent remark that US-Russia relations are at an “all time low” and pairs it with Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev’s comment after the Trump administration’s cruise missile attack on a Syrian air base, “We are on the brink of war, and American-Russian relations are utterly ruined.” Cohen points out that Medvedev is actually the most pro-American member of the Russian administration, on whom President Obama and Secretary Clinton based their Russian “reset” in 2009. …

“Imagine if Kennedy had been accused of being a secret Soviet Kremlin agent,” Cohen said. “He would have been crippled. And the only way he could have proved he wasn’t was to have launched a war against the Soviet Union. And at that time, the option was nuclear war.”

Cohen added that this raises the question, “Why did Trump launch 50 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian Air Force base, when, God help us, he did kill some people, but was of no military value whatsoever? Was this meant to show ‘I’m not a Kremlin agent’?” …

One government rose above the rest, and the few monkeys who figured out how to steer it just couldn’t leave the rest of the world alone. They had to keep shoring up more and more power and control, making sure none of the other governments got as strong as their government. They keep making up reasons for why they need to be involved in the affairs of the other nations;
“Oh, your country needs protection, you should sign these treaties.”
“Oh, your country has a dictator, let me get rid of him for you.”
“Oh, your country has terrorists, we’ll just come in and fix your terrorism problem by riddling your country with blast craters and bullet holes.” …

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I’m a 50 year-old, white professional who grew up in a very racially and socioeconomically mixed suburb of New York City and still live near my hometown. Yaaawwwnnnnn. I know. But here’s why it’s relevant: Nothing could be more stereotypically Democratic than where I grew up and who I grew up with. The very large majority of my friends and I all shared similar values. White. Black. Rich. Poor. Everyone in between. We mostly all agreed on the major issues and have since voted the same way. Political discussions rarely took place because it was just too damned boring to agree on everything. The title of this opinion piece refers to my “Democrat Friends,” not in the euphemistic way that Senators refer to anyone across the aisle, but to my real friends, the people that I have known as a kid and have grown up with and shared my life with.

I still have the same core principles that I’ve always had. My friends do too. It had always been that way. And then 2016 came along. Now, even though we still all have the same fundamental values, we no longer seem to agree on much of anything. As a Progressive who refuses to “fall in line” with the Democrats, I am suddenly ostracized by my friends, and now I’m the fringe lunatic asshole. I’m ok with that. But, I’m tired of explaining to my friends over and over again why I refuse to be a good soldier and why, if nothing else changes, their approach is the simplest path to ensuring more Trump and more GOP domination. …

yeah, that bugs me too, but I liked the opinion piece. some of us are dumbfounded at how our friends and acquaintances have embraced the policies, as the author says, of the DLCers.

i find the same thing. the Dems, many of whom i thought were true Berniecrats are not, actually, and are melding in seamlessly with the larger Dem Party here.

There are only a few left from the campaign, if that, that still cannot stomach most Dems. The head of our local county Party is speaking at this month’s Our Revolution meeting, and he said that Nancy Pelosi is one of his heroes! aaarrrrrgh.

I’m considered rude for reminding folks that they were elected into the local party leadership on a Bernie slate. It’s a lot easier to just join the Borg, I’m tellin’ ya.